Main menu

Tag: Navaho culture

“Right now, this moment, this night, here felt good. I was me – not part white, part Navajo – just me, sitting quietly in the night. The Milky Way was a river of stars – millions of universes.” from Soldier…

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Who We Are

Author/illustrator/storyteller/recovering-teacher/poet, Linda Boyden has written six and illustrated five picture books, The Blue Roses, Powwow’s Coming, Giveaways: An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas, Boy and Poi Poi Puppy, Roxy Reindeer, and Boy and Poi Poi Puppy in Doggone! She has had many poems published in various literary journals. She belongs to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and Writers Forum of Redding CA. She says, “I spoil kids and grandkids. I write. I teach. I color in or outside the lines. 2016 is my fifth year of writing a poem a day. Poetry gives voice to our silent songs.”

Nancy Bo Flood lives on the Navajo Reservation where she writes, hikes, and attends local rodeos. Her award-winning books include: Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons (Arizona Book Award), Warriors in the Crossfire (Colorado Book Award, YALSA), No-Name Baby (Bank Street’s 100 Best Children’s Books of 2012; Horn Book’s top choice historical novels). Cowboy Up, Ride the Navajo Rodeo, a recent poetry-nonfiction, is a Library Guild selection. Visit her at www.nancyboflood.com.

E. M. Kokie is the author of Radical (Candlewick Press, 9/13/16), which explores family, identity, survival, and guns, not necessarily in that order. Her first novel, Personal Effects (Candlewick Press, 2012), was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults and Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Top Ten, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a 2013 IRA Young Adult Honor Book. She also contributed to the anthologies Things I'll Never Say: Stories About Our Secret Selves (Candlewick Press, 2015) and Violent Ends (Simon Pulse, 2015). Visit her online at www.emkokie.com.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the 2009 novel Gringolandia (Curbstone Press/Northwestern UP), a ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Americas Award Honor Book about a teenage refugee from Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship. Her 2013 novel, Rogue (Nancy Paulsen/Penguin), a Junior Library Guild selection, portrays a young teenager with Asperger's and an X-Men obsession in search of a friend and her own special power. Surviving Santiago, the companion to Gringolandia, was published by Running Press in June 2015. Lyn translated the picture books The World in a Second (Enchanted Lion, 2015; a Kirkus and Boston Globe Best Book of 2015), and Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words (Enchanted Lion, 2016) from Portuguese to English, with two more translations due out in 2017. Visit her at www.lynmillerlachmann.com.

Peter Marino is an English professor at SUNY Adirondack. His novels for young adults Dough Boy (2005) and Magic and Misery (2009) have been nominated by the American Library Association for Best Books for Young Adults. Magic and Misery made Booklist's Top 10 Fiction for Youth (2010) and the ALA Round Table’s Rainbow Books Bibliography.

J.L. Powers is the award-winning author of several books, most recently a picture book, Colors of the Wind: the story of blind artist and champion runner George Mendoza , illustrated with Mendoza's artwork. She is also the author of several young adult novels: The Confessional (2007), This Thing Called the Future(2011), a coming-of-age novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, and editor of That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, an anthology of essays from around the world (2012). Her novel Amina(2013) was published in Australia and explores a girl graffiti artist growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia. Visit her at www.jlpowers.net.

Award winning American author, Padma Venkatraman, worked as chief scientist on oceanographic ships, spent time under the sea, directed a school, and lived in 5 countries before settling down in Rhode Island. Her 3 novels, A TIME TO DANCE, ISLAND’S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS, were each released to multiple starred reviews (totaling 12), have been cited on ~50 best books lists (e.g. NYPL, Kirkus, Booklist, ALA notable) and have won numerous honors and awards: Paterson Prize, Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Award, RI Book of the Year, Singapore Children’s Choice Red Dot Award, South Asia Book Award etc. She enjoys teaching, mentoring, participating on panels, giving commencement speeches and providing keynote addresses at national conferences, and has been chief guest at international literary festivals. Her work has been featured on national and international TV and radio, and in a documentary. Visit her at Padma Venkatraman.

Terry Farish, Varian Johnson, and Ann Angel all gave of their time, passion, heart and soul in the past to The Pirate Tree and we gratefully acknowledge their help and much needed contributions both to The Pirate Tree and also to children's literature.

About

The Pirate Tree is a collective of children's and young adult writers interested in children's literature and social justice issues. For editorial or administrative issues, or to contact any of the authors whose email addresses are unlisted, please contact J.L. Powers at the address below. If you have a book you'd like to recommend for a review or an interview subject, guest writer, or topic that you'd like to suggest, please contact J.L. Powers.

Mission Statement

The writers at The Pirate Tree seek to expose and discuss literature and writers for children and teenagers that delve into themes of social justice and social conscience. The title, “The Pirate Tree,” comes from a picture book that Lyn Miller-Lachman once wrote about two children whose grandfathers fought on opposite sides of a war. The children were prohibited from going into each others’ yards, but they figured out a way to meet and play pirates together by climbing a tree with limbs and branches above both their yards. Like the story suggested, we are interested in books and writers that question and rebel against the status quo, argue for peace and reconciliation, take the side of the marginalized and powerless, and use creative solutions to overcome obstacles.